- Susanna Drake: That 4th of July race... what happens when you win?
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: Well, according to a friend of mine, if I win, a beautiful girl will place a garland of oak leaves on my sun-colored locks.
- Susanna Drake: I'd like to be that girl.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: Maybe it can be arranged?
- Susanna Drake: Oh, it can be arranged, all right. *I'll* arrange it.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: To see the Raintree is not nearly as important as what you find looking for it.
- Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles: [On the back of the train, leaving town in a hurry] Goodbye, dear friend. Remember me as a man who loves Raintree County, but just happens to loathe most of the people in it.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: [On the riverboat with Susanna, visiting the South for the first time] You were right, Mrs. Shawnessy, I like your river. I really do. It even smells good.
- Susanna Drake: I knew that you'd understand it. Which is more than most Yankees do. Now, that's something I don't understand. 'Cause all you have to do is go South once and you LOVE it!
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: Well, to us Yankees, the South is not too easy to understand... You ever read "Uncle Tom's Cabin"?
- Susanna Drake: [Shocked] "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? Phoo... I haven't married an abolitionist, have I?
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: That is the skeleton in my closet.
- Susanna Drake: Now, you mustn't joke about it.
- Susanna Drake: [Arranging a vast collection of dolls on her bed] Anyway, there's worse things than being an abolitionist.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: Like what?
- Susanna Drake: Like having Negro blood in you. Isn't it funny? Just one little teeny drop and a person's all Negro. A person can't always tell, either.
- T.D. Shawnessy: War is the most monstrous of man's illusions. Any idea worth anything is worth not fighting for.
- Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles: Greatness? Ha! If that great philosopher, Socrates, were living today, he'd be reduced to sitting on a cracker barrel, chewing tobacco. That's what America does for greatness.
- Man in crowd: [the professor is putting money on a footrace between Flash and Johnny] That there's gold!
- Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles: My yearly stipend as a teacher. A molder of young minds.
- Man in crowd: Fifty dollars!
- Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles: It's not much, but neither are the minds I mold.
- Susanna Drake: Cousin Sam, John doesn't like slavery.
- Cousin Sam: Does John like the "wage slavery" of the North?
- Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles: [to John and Flash, sitting in the woods not far from Confederate lines] Comrades in arms, a toast. To all the men who go out and die, and merely because they have the rotten luck to be born one side or another of a mountain or a creek...
- Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles: [Takes a swig] And here's to sleep...
- Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles: [Takes another swig] Let's get a good night of it. Because tomorrow, crusader, you're starting a journey, to a new and unknown land: a place called Hell.
- Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles: Take it from one, dear boy, who has dabbled in many a garden of delight: the home-grown tomatoes are always best.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: My students seem to enjoy creepin' up on me.
- Nell Gaither: They're all in love with you.
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: Teachers get fallen in love with. It's an occupational hazard.
- Ellen Shawnessy: Did you ever hear your father's sermon on the evils of tobacco? Ends with a regular poem: "Some do it chew, and some do it smoke, while some it up their noses do poke."
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: I do all three at the same time.
- T.D. Shawnessy: [to Flash, who is drinking beer in public] Flash Perkins, don't you know that your body is the temple of the spirit, and you defile and pollute it with that Devil's brew you have there?
- Orville 'Flash' Perkins: [Nonchalantly] Why, if you say so, pappy...
- T.D. Shawnessy: Why don't you come 'round to our next temperance rally. Come 'round and take the Total Abstinence Pledge.
- Orville 'Flash' Perkins: Why, pappy, I'll take that pledge right now.
- T.D. Shawnessy: Orville, we want men to take that pledge only when they're sober.
- Orville 'Flash' Perkins: But if they're sober, what's the point in havin' them take the pledge?
- [Everybody laughs]
- Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles: [Referring to the fact that Mr. Gray, an old man, has managed to marry Lydia, a beautiful young woman] How in the entire realm of plausibility did that chilly January win such a blithesome May?
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: [People are gathering in the town center] What's going on here?
- Ellen Shawnessy: You haven't heard? They've attacked Fort Sumter. It means war sure as anything.
- T.D. Shawnessy: I'm not so sure. Now, say what you will, Americans will never fight each other. We'll settle our difficulties peacefully.
- Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles: [Narrating] May the 16th, 1864. Resaca, Georgia. Another day of dramatic corpse-making.
- Prof. Jerusalem Webster Stiles: [to the photographer, who has just taken the graduating class portrait] Mr. Sterling, you have made us immortal.
- Cousin Sam: We in the South dream of a great republic on the soil of America. Within its pillared homes dwell the most beautiful women.
- Bobby Drake: [Chuckling] Oh, Sam, you are wonderful. You shovel that stuff with a golden pitchfork!
- Susanna Drake: To think: all this happened to your father 'cause he climbed the stair one day to have his picture taken. And I was there.
- Susanna Drake: John, don't go
- [Susanna is upset, and doesn't want him to leave]
- John Wickliff Shawnessy: Where would I go
- [assuring her that he'd never leave her]